Newbie turnout question

Atlas turnouts do not do power routing; all routes are always powered.

There are power routing turnouts (Walters and others), but I've not used them. You could also install a manual switch for each route and enable it when needed. You would insulate the turnout from the routes.

Or (to re-ignite the war), go with DCC, in which case you use the turnouts as is(they are DCC friendly out of the box, but see the wiring for DCC website cited below), and you need do nothing except drive the loco onto the dead end section, and then de-select it.

Ed

in article pan.2005.01.24.19.19.23.802349@_nospam_towens.com, TomO at tom@_nospam_towens.com wrote on 1/24/05 11:19 AM:

Hi, Tom!

The Atlas Custom-Line and Snap Switches have all rails powered at all times. To modify these turnouts to be "power-routing", you will need a razor saw or Dremel tool with a cut-off disk. There is a metal bridge between the closure rails (the two solid rails going from where the rails cross - the "frog" - to the moveable points) and the adjoining stock rails. This is buried in the first tie of the closure rail, nearest the heel of the point. Saw through this tie. Your turnouts will be power-routing.

There is one caveat (well, more than one, but we'll deal with the others another time) with these turnouts, however: the electrical contact bewteen the points and the closure rails depends on a rivet. This rivet works loose with use, and you will find your sidings, or the whole yard ladder, going dead at unpredictable times. They should be OK for a while, but corrections will need to be made to the design or the turnouts replaced, sooner or later. If you're really handy with a soldering iron, you could solder a tiny flex wire between the closure rail and the point...

"gmcrail" wrote in news:1106604485.261274.268070 @f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Thanks for that info. I'll give 'er a go with the dremmel and the wire soldered around the rivet. What's the worst that can happen? It appeared to me also that I may have a contact problem where the 'moveable' portion of the rails needs to make contact with the stationary part. It just doesn't seem like much contact area there.

I guess if it gives me a lot of trouble, I could just go and purchase power routing turnouts instead.

TomO wrote: [...]

Yes, for your purposes.

or is there some standard modification that can be

Yes, and it's fairly easy. The frogs are isolated from the both the stock and the closure rails. The closure rails are connected to the stock rails on the same side. The rails beyond the frog are connected to the clsure rails underneath the frogs. You can cut the connection between closure and stock rails, and connect the closure rails to each other. This way, the points will connect the closure rails and the far rails to one or the other stock rail.

Another solution is to isolate the tracks beyond the tunrout (eg, use plastic railjoiners) and rig up contacts to that it's powered or not depending on the position of the points. One way to do this is to use a DPDT switch to move the points directly through an extended throwbar. The centre poles are connceted to the rails at the toe of the turnout, and the other set to the rails beyond the frog.

Or you can buy turnouts that do in fact switch the power when the points are thrown. Shinohara and MicroEngineering come to mind, but there are others, too. You will have to also buy switch machines, so the total cost of this solutoion will be considerably higher thna the Atlas solution.

You're welcome. Have fun!

If you do go with power routing turnouts, it's also helpful to use a switch machine or switch motor with auxialiary contacts to route the power to the frog. or the rails beyond.

Atlas makes a "snap relay" to do this if you want to continue using the Atlas machines.

Don

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TomO, An even easier solution than the one that Wolf proposed is to isolate one rail of the siding with an insulating fishplate (Connector) close to the turnout and then set up an on-off switch to provide a connection as required from the isolated rail to the equivalent rail of the main track. Probably the cheapest solution. Regards,

Seems to me to be the only way, really. Even with power routing, one of the tracks will always be powered. My preference would be to keep the power routing, isolate the siding as suggested by William Pearce, and wire a switch into each siding. In fact, if the sidings are long enough you might even consider dividing them up even more, so you can isolate multiple locos in each.

Ron